Throughout the world, many people own guns or other valuables that they would like to conceal from both children and thieves. It is essential to keep guns safely hidden from children as their curiosity about the guns may lead to a harmful or deadly accident. It is also necessary to hide guns and other valuables from thieves that may burglarize a home.
There are many types of safes and cabinets that exist to store and lock such valuables; however, they are usually fairly conspicuous and do not conceal the mere fact of their presence in the home or other dwelling. Therefore, with such safes and cabinets, neither children nor thieves are ignorant of the presence of guns or other valuables. In fact, a safe would even attract a thief since most people obviously store valuable items in safes. Nevertheless, many thieves are familiar with the methods used to break into such safes and cabinets. This is especially true of devices that use common combination or electronic locks. Some of these devices are also very costly, so that they are not easily attainable, and many of these devices are simply eyesores, as they do not adequately blend in with a home's décor and furnishings. Additionally, many of these safes are not fully adaptable for storing a wide variety of items and, instead, are designed specifically for one type of item to be stored (e.g. guns, money or documents).
Drawbacks and Potential Improvements
Due to the aforementioned limitations in gun safe devices, there is a need in the art for a device to securely conceal firearms and other valuables that is completely undetectable to the ordinary person, child, or thief. What is needed is a device that looks completely inconspicuous with respect to its intended function (i.e., to securely conceal and store firearms and other valuables). The device should not only be secure and inconspicuous, but it should also be quickly accessible to the owner or rightful user of the firearms being concealed in the event immediate access is necessary as in an emergency situation. The device should also be versatile enough to contain a variety of items that one might want to conceal. In addition, this device should ideally be cost effective.
Many of the gun and storage devices for valuables that are designed to blend in with other furnishings have a number of drawbacks. Many of these storage devices are designed as pieces of furniture, such as tables, chests, armoires, curios, etc. However, when thieves or other persons are looking for items of value, it is most common to begin checking the drawers or other storage compartments of these types of furniture because it is the most obvious place to store items. Even with combination locks, key locks, or electronic locks in place, the persistent or skillful thief can find a way to eventually break or circumvent the lock or crack the code. On the other hand, since a hidden key has to be obtained or a multi-digit combination code has to be precisely programmed into a lock device, such locking mechanisms may take too much time to unlock should a gun owner need immediate access in the event of an emergency or life and death situation.
There are also devices that incorporate hidden storage inside the walls of a home that are concealed by pieces of art. While these devices are slightly more sophisticated, they are also considerably more costly, and they are not unknown to thieves as these types of safes are commonly depicted in motion pictures and television shows. Once again, commonplace combination locks and keypads used in these devices may not deter thieves or other persons looking to gain access to guns and valuables stored therein. These devices may sometimes be outfitted with more complex biometric locking mechanisms, but would be significantly more costly to the average person.
Furthermore, some gun and valuable storage devices are built into false walls and secret doorways. While these devices may be very effective at disguising their true purpose, they are extremely expensive due to the labor involved in creating and building a custom device for an individual home or other dwelling. This places such devices out of reach to a person who does not own their residence or the average person looking to safely and feasibly store guns and other valuables away from children and thieves.
A device that performs the functions and addresses the drawbacks explained above is likely to help a great number of people securely and inconspicuously store their guns and other valuables. Other advantages of the present invention will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in light of the ensuing description of the present invention.